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Commentary

World Cup: 99.3 Percent Perfection

Another World Cup is over. This is the 13th World Cup I watched in my life. I cannot recall all of them in detail but definitely the World Cup 2018 will stand as one of the better World Cups in my
personal history. This World Cup buried the systems dominated by stars. This World Cup ended brutal play via the use of the VAR system. This World Cup introduced new stars like Kylian
Mbappe (19) and polished an old star Luka Modric (33) by placing him under the under the limelight. This World Cup proved that nations who take development seriously
will excel over nations who just produce raw talent. This World Cup enhanced the dominance of European teams over the others. This World Cup showed the importance of compact defense and the transition
play. This World Cup was a eulogy to Tiki Taka. This World Cup had some incredible goalkeeping as well as some howlers by some of the best goalkeepers of the world. This World Cup underlined again the
importance of set-plays in national competitions. This World Cup crowned the midfielders as the new kings. Last but not the least this was the only World Cup in my personal history that was officiated
to near perfection.

Let us look at the officiating with some numbers. 35 referees were invited from 34 countries (USA had two) covering all six confederations. Only 28 of them refereed
at least one match. Seven of them returned home without refereeing a single game. Although it is an honor for a referee to be invited to the World Cup, FIFA should have also considered the possible
humiliation these seven referees might face when they go back home. Nestor Pitana (Argentina) had five games under his belt including the opening game and the final. Alireza
Faghani (Iran) and Bjorn Kuipers (Netherlands) had four games each. The rest of them had three to one game each. The appointments were heavily around UEFA and Conmebol
referees at the knockout stage. Concacaf had two, AFC had two and CAF had one game at the knockout stage. So 11 games went for UEFA and CONMEBOL referees. What was interesting was that unlike the 12
World Cups I watched earlier, the quality gap between UEFA/Conmebol referees and referees from other Confederations has decreased considerably in this World Cup.

The
tournament ended with an average of 3.5 yellow cards per game and 0.06 red cards per game. There were 2.6 goals per game also. There were four red cards in the 64 games played; this is far lower
than the averages in national leagues, earlier World Cups and UEFA Champions League etc. Out of four red cards, two of them were for DOGSO and two for a second yellow card. There were no red
cards for serious foul play (SFP) or violent conduct (VC). I watched nearly all 64 games, missing a couple; I did not see a single incident that I can say was not reviewed or clearly worthy of a red
card for SFP or VC. I agree that there were a number of “orange” cards that went for yellow. Let us not forget that soccer is passion, show business and a sport. The World Cup is a
pinnacle of the soccer show and FIFA wants to keep the actors of this show on the field as much as possible. One reason for the nonexistence of red cards for SFP and VC was the existence of 36 cameras
in each stadium and the use of the VAR system. The VAR system acted as an important deterrent factor especially for off the ball foul play.

Although there were 3.5 yellow cards per
game, the average was lower at the beginning of the tournament. It is obvious that the referees were “fine-tuned” as Pierluigi Collina said in the press conference after the group stage games. When I watched the games, there were few
yellow cards that I thought could have been avoided or not shown. On the other hand, there were quite a number of yellow cards that were not issued according to my judgment. Naturally, my judgments
are personal but since I followed some refereeing blogs, my judgment were shared by other persons who have serious refereeing backgrounds. What is interesting is that these misses happened mostly in
the first half of the games. Since I do not have access to a statistics to tell us what percentage of the yellow cards were shown in the first half, I cannot make a definitive objective judgment. In
those games, that yellow cards were missed in the first half the referees had to use the yellow cards in the second halves to control the game. Since two yellow cards in two different games
result in a suspension, I believe FIFA have asked referees to sparingly use the yellow cards just for obvious ones. The problem is that once the players realize that the referees are reluctant to use
the cards, they might and they did exploit this “leniency”. So in a few games there was disrespect for the referees and a few referee mobbings have occurred. These scenes will be
remembered as the only negative aspect of an otherwise excellent tournament in terms of officiating. Those few scenes tarnished the image of our “jugo bonito”. These were the unfortunate
outcome of leniency by the referees trying to keep the game under control using management techniques without issuing cards I suppose following the advice of FIFA.

Most of the
fouls which were “stopping a promising attack” were disciplined with a yellow card. The yellow cards that were missed were usually for fouls which were deemed by the referee as careless
instead of reckless. There were very few cards for dissent and persistent infringement. Even though some yellow cards were missed, the games were always under control with no serious prolonged
mass confrontations or injuries except for the few games I mentioned above.

There were 26.9 fouls per game in this World Cup. This average is very much in line with rest of
the Leagues and Championships in the World except the English Premier League. Overall foul recognition was extremely good. One problem was the holding and pushing during the set plays at the
beginning of the tournament. Although referees preached the players before nearly on every set play, two courageous penalty decisions were required to end this frenzy. Towards the end of the
tournament, there were very few pushing and holding during set plays. So action is always better than just talking; action is the only message that is effective with players.

One serious type of foul that usually went unnoticed was the use of arms/ elbows when heading the ball. Lots of elbowing or the use of the upper arm on the opponent when heading ball went
without a yellow card and even in some cases without a foul called. This is the only major area of improvement needed in terms of foul recognition.

One other topic that needs to
be addressed by FIFA/IFAB is the concussion protocol. A player with a suspected concussion should not be allowed to play. They can use the guidelines of U.S. Soccer as a starting point. Maybe such a
decision should be made by a neutral medical staff on the field of play.

For those readers who referee at different levels one should realize that grassroots, amateur and
professional games have the same LOTG. But the approach to these different levels of games by the referees and even the interpretations of the LOTG are different; in each level “football”
expects something different. So in a few weeks when you watch a professional league game or a youth game and see different applications compared to the refereeing in this World Cup please look at it
from the perspective of each competition and what “football” expects at that level.

The gem of this tournament in terms of officiating was the use of VAR. VAR has been
used extremely effectively in this tournament. Especially asking the assistant referees not to raise their flags prematurely for an offside suspicion during promising attacks helped the VAR system a
lot. In case a goal was scored the VAR was able to check the goal for offside, otherwise once the whistle is blown there is now way to award a goal if there was no offside infraction.

Although the final figures have not been released yet in the group stages 335 incidents in 48 games were checked by the VAR and AVARs. (At the end of the tournament there were 455 checks and 20
reviews. This is an average of 7.11 checks per game. Since all goals are checked we are actually talking about 4.5 checks per game for non-goal incidents) In those 48 matches 17 decisions have
been found to be a clear and obvious error by the refereeing team on the field of play. 14 of them required an on the field review (OFR) with either a change or approval of a decision and three were
decided by the VAR (objective/factual decisions like offside/mistaken identity). There were 14 penalty kicks awarded in the first 48 games and seven of them were the result of intervention by
the VAR system. There were no reviews initiated by the referee. On the average an OFR took about 80 seconds.

The knockout stage had fewer OFRs compared to the group stage. Basically the
VAR system had been utilized effectively without losing the fluency of the game. I agree that there were cases when an OFR should have been used and there were a few cases when the use of the OFR
seemed unnecessary. According to FIFA, during the group stages of the 335 incidents checked only two had an error even with the intervention of the VAR resulting in 99.3% perfection. Let us not forget
that in order to be an error, the decision reviewed must be an obvious and clear error in terms of the VAR protocol and not been corrected by the
referee on the field. Let us not forget also that most of the obvious and clear errors are based on humanly subjective interpretations by the VAR team. Since decisions like corner
kicks, free kicks, yellow cards are not in the context of the VAR protocol, they are not in the domain of the 335 checks. So our praises should go to Collina and company for such a good implementation
of the VAR concept in this tournament. Bottom line: there were no controversial or scandalous decisions in this World Cup thanks to the effective use of VAR.

Although I said
that actually there were no controversial decisions leading to scandals –- like the goal scored by the hand of god in 1986 -- there were two critical decisions in the final that still created
some controversy.

The free kick that France has scored the first goal from was not actually a foul. Replays showed that Antoine Griezmann dived and the referee
awarded the free kick that resulted with a goal. If the game has ended 1-0 with that goal there would have been quite a bit of controversy. Unfortunately, free kicks are not in the domain of the VAR
protocol and cannot be reviewed. So we should never forget that wherever there is a human there will be mistakes and errors regardless how much technology we use.

The penalty-kick
that was awarded for France after an OFR review had a lot of objections from various people including the coach of Croatia. What was discussed was whether that contact between the hand and the ball
was a clear and obvious error that required an OFR. Or in other words “was that a deliberate handball?” As Collina also admits, “deliberate handling” is a very difficult
decision to make and it is subjective. During the 14 penalty kicks awarded in the group stage, six of them (43%) were for deliberate handling. One should ask: Are 43 percent of the free kicks outside
the penalty are awarded for deliberate handling? One of the criteria to decide the contact between the ball and the hand is the “natural position of the hand/arm.” Can anyone define the
“natural position” of the hand/arm in every different action of players? Hands and arms are used to balance oneself and do not necessarily be close to the
body.As long as “deliberate” is used in the LOTG for handling and as long as IFAB cannot come up with a better definition of “deliberate handling," these types of
arguments will continue.

Although we had 99.3% accuracy in the game changing situations during the group stage of this World Cup according to FIFA,
we still have 0.7% to worry about. Nothing is perfect but the officiating in this World Cup was the best ever and was close to perfection. One can definitely see the footsteps of Collina and company in
this success story.

Ahmet Guvener (ahmet@ahmetguvener.com) is the former Secretary General and the Technical Director of
Turkish FA. He was also the Head of Refereeing for the Turkish FA. He served as Panel member for the FIFA Panel of Referee Instructors and UEFA Referee Convention. He now lives and works as a soccer
consultant in Austin, TX.

Thank you very much Ahmet! This is by far the best analysis of the officating of this Russia WC '18! I sincerely appreciate your insightful and simple diagnosis and analysis of the statistics from which you formed your essay, and I for one, could not agree with you more. I felt that this WC was one of the better organized in terms of athletic and entertainment value, and so I hope and trust that the forthcoming ones will provide us, the on-site spectator and tv viewer with athletic and entertainment as good if not better than this recently concluded world competition.

I agree with Ahmet, Ric and Uffe (and bonus points to Uffe for the comment on Geiger's game; not a pretty game, probably should have pulled some cards earlier but primarily the problem was the players). The final was unfortunate, both for Greisman's dive (and one has to admire his proficiency; okay, maybe not; I like Greisman but I hate the fact that they scored off this free kick, but I understand why the ref called it). As for the PK, I do not think it should have been given (because the Croatian defender's arms were being used for balance; if you watch the replay, his arms both go up when he jumps, and come back down as he comes back down (the key being that both are doing the same thing), so they are being used for balance, not to strike the ball (which he probably doesn't even have time to react to). On the other hand, anyone seeing his hand moving down and striking the ball will think this should be called. So like the Griesman "foul", I don't think it should have been given, but understand why it was. So Croatia was a bit unlucky...

I agree with Ahmet, Ric and Uffe (and bonus points to Uffe for the comment on Geiger's game; not a pretty game, probably should have pulled some cards earlier but primarily the problem was the players). The final was unfortunate, both for Greisman's dive (and one has to admire his proficiency; okay, maybe not; I like Greisman but I hate the fact that they scored off this free kick, but I understand why the ref called it). As for the PK, I do not think it should have been given (because the Croatian defender's arms were being used for balance; if you watch the replay, his arms both go up when he jumps, and come back down as he comes back down (the key being that both are doing the same thing), so they are being used for balance, not to strike the ball (which he probably doesn't even have time to react to). On the other hand, anyone seeing his hand moving down and striking the ball will think this should be called. So like the Griesman "foul", I don't think it should have been given, but understand why it was. So Croatia was a bit unlucky...

I agree with your assessment. Most notable was the lack of "yellow" cards early to set the proper player consideration of the other players. But several gamers then had "yellow" cards within 5 minutes of the start of the second half.

You know that my preference is for referees to set the standards early and often until all plyers are complying with fair play in the game.

Ahmet Guvener is the former Secretary General and Technical Director of Turkish FA. He was also the Head of Refereeing for the Turkish FA. He served as Panel member for the FIFA Panel of Referee Instructors and UEFA Referee Convention. He now lives in Austin, Texas.